Employees should be recognised as individuals with individual needs if you want them to do well. It turns out that your mum was actually wrong about treating others as you would like to be treated. In businesses and organisations, managers need to take on the principle, treat others as they would like to be treated.

For more information and articles on innovation and engagement, please visit our site http://www.thirsty-horses.com/

Engaging your staff is very important if you want to keep them on board. The traditional reward for good work performance is a pay rise and while most workers would, of course welcome this, managers need to give that little bit extra to particularly strong employees. Pay rises might boost performance for a week or so, but they aren’t capable of sustaining the initial engagement that they usually get from employees, particularly that additional effort that really engaged employees are usually willing to give. Sometimes managers think that because they aren’t hearing much from their employees that everything is fine. No problems to report. This isn’t the case because either they are scared to approach you or so passive that they don’t really care anymore. They aren’t energised in their work. If you want your employees to go the extra mile for you, then you need to give them support. Maybe you have already seen examples of this in the past?

Recognise Individual Needs

Employees should be recognised as individuals with individual needs if you want them to do well. It turns out that your mum was actually wrong about treating others as you would like to be treated. In businesses and organisations, managers need to take on the principle, treat others as they would like to be treated. Listening is key here. Let employees talk to you and try to understand how you can engage them. Listening needs to be done in an authentic manner whether it is an informal chat over coffee or in passing or a formal meeting or through technology.

Accept the Generation Gap

This is more important than ever in the workplace nowadays. Leaders and managers particularly those in a large organisation are likely to be managing those across a broad age range. Millennials are those born between the early 1980s and early 2000s. Those within this age range generally expect a two-way relationship with their employer, one that is almost like a psychological contract where mutual expectations are a given. These mutual expectations about what an employee’s role in the business needs to include a clear career progression path that helps them to understand how their output is aligned to the organisation itself. Older workers need a different kind of consideration given that so many of them will end up working past the retirement age. All employees need to have a line of sight outlined to them, where their role to a purpose of the organisation has a clear strategic narrate from their manager or leader about the direction of the organisation and how the work they do leads to that.

Listening to Engage

Regardless of their age and needs, employers can always find a new and correct approach that will be defined by listening to their employees. It is crucial to understand that each of their team is different and requires different ways of doing things. Managers who listen encourage employee engagement and can then take steps empower employees in their roles which will see the real improvements in performance. These additional efforts will see the real change in the organisation.

I’d be interested to know if anybody has any similar tips that are working for them or have seen used elsewhere?